Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain

ISBN-13: 9780521767910 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 366 str.

Theodore Koditschek

Opis

This book examines the ways in which imperial agendas informed the writing of history in nineteenth-century Britain and how historical writing transformed imperial agendas. Using the published writings and personal papers of Walter Scott, J. A. Froude, James Mill, Rammohun Roy, T. B. Macaulay, E. A. Freeman, W. E. Gladstone, and J. R. Seeley among others, Theodore Koditschek sheds new light on the role of the historical imagination in the establishment and legitimation of liberal imperialism. He shows how both imperialists and the imperialized were drawn to reflect back on Empire's past as a result of the need to construct a modern, multi-national British imperial identity for a more economically expansive and enlightened present. By tracing the imperial lives and historical works of these pivotal figures, Theodore Koditschek illuminates the ways in which discourse altered practice, and vice versa, as well as how the history of Empire was continuously written and re-written.

Recenzje

'Koditschek, in scope and depth, achieves a masterful synthesis that should make this book the standard work for understanding liberal imperial thinking in the nineteenth century.' Karuna Mantena, Victorian Studies

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Imagining Great Britain: Union, Empire and the burden of history: 1800–30; 2. Imagining a British India: history and the re-construction of Empire; 3. Imagining a Greater Britain: the Macaulays and the liberal romance of Empire; 4. Re-imagining a Greater Britain: J. A. Froude: counter-romance and controversy; 5. Greater Britain and the 'lesser breeds': liberalism, race and evolutionary history; 6. Indian liberals and Greater Britain: the search for union through history; Epilogue: from liberal imperialism to conservative unionism: losing the thread of progress in history.